


What If?

by foodaddict



Category: Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, High School Drama, Lots of drinking, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Read-If-You-Want-to-Hurt-Yourself, Reylo - Freeform, Sad, Time Skips, alternative universe, personal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17308490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foodaddict/pseuds/foodaddict
Summary: Ben Solo was always that one guy she was sure was beyond her reach. When he gets married, Rey Niima wonders if she shouldn’t have been so sure of that.





	What If?

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo . . . someone I considered a friend got married last year and I was happy for them. And _then_ I found out a bunch of things that made me wish a lot of things. This fic is essentially me processing my feelings, so apologies if it’s a bit much.

        Saturday night is usually her favourite night of the week. Rey Niima hasn’t really been dating much the last two years—there’s not much room for that in the life of an ambitious yuppie who wants her own company before she’s thirty—but Saturday night is always for going out to have fun. Seeing her old high school crew—those of them that are in the same city as her, at least—almost always guarantees a party, and she’d prepped for that.

 

        She just hadn’t been expecting Rose, High School Bestie #1 and fiancée of Finn, High School Bestie #2, to drop a bomb on her.

 

        _“Oh, did you hear that Ben Solo got married?”_

 

        None of them had been invited, which had surprised no one, considering how little they’d kept in touch over the years. Rey had gone off to college in the desert, and while Finn and Rose had finished their education in their hometown, they’d all eventually moved to the same steaming metropolis where most people went to try their luck at making it.

 

        Ben Solo had stayed in the chilly city where they’d grown up, where he’d always been at home with the snooty crowd of landed aristocracy that owned most of the place. Rey had seen him a total of three times since they’d graduated high school, so she wouldn’t exactly call them friends.

 

        But it still stings sharply when Rose tells her that Ben is married, and the burning feeling in her chest only goes away when Rey finishes a bottle of whiskey to toast his happiness.

 

*

 

        There are officially three heartthrobs in their year, and Rey feels stupidly proud to be friends with all of them. Finn is her best and first friend, which is why everyone thinks they’re together. He eats lunch with her and walks her home every day, and anyone who messes with her will answer to him. They talk about dating, but don’t. Neither of them can really see each other that way, despite how close they are. They’d kissed once in fourth grade, just to see what it would be like, and had agreed that “weird” and “gross” were not the reactions that sweethearts would have.

 

        Poe is her actual boyfriend, even though most people don’t know it. They don’t really hang out in public because Rey doesn’t like PDA and Poe is flirty with everyone as a rule. Poe makes her laugh and gloms onto her every chance he gets, and she’s happy with him even if she can’t exactly call him serious. Who’s serious at fifteen, anyway?

 

        Ben is Poe’s unlikely best friend, the dark and brooding antidote to Poe’s sunny brightness. Rey doesn’t really get why so many girls swoon over him. Sure, he’s handsome in a strange way, and smart, and scion to the city’s most illustrious family, but he’s also awkward and unfriendly and too blunt and intense. He’d asked Rey to dance once at an event in junior high. Rey had been flattered until he’d seen fit to tell her that he’d only asked because he’d lost a bet to Poe. She’d left him out on the dance floor, humiliated and furious with herself for ever thinking that Ben Solo might actually be interested in her.

 

        Ben and Poe fight more than they get along, but they’ve been like that since they were in diapers, and neither of them seems to consider it an alternative to just _not_ be friends. They stick together despite their differences, and when Poe and Rey break up she isn’t surprised that Ben stops talking to her, too.

 

*

 

        They all hang out more often in senior year. Finn is dating Rose and Poe is dating Kaydel. Rey and Ben aren’t dating anyone, but they hang out because they’re friends with each other’s friends. Maybe it’s because they know they’re all splitting up soon, but they all get along.

 

        Ben is in the same organizations as her, and he’s surprisingly helpful. He lets her use the ballroom in his manor as rehearsal space for the drama club on weekends and drives her around when she needs to do student council errands. They talk about things like her foster father’s drinking problem and his parents’ complicated relationship. He sneaks alcohol from his family’s establishments for them to try.

 

        When they graduate, Ben’s dad lets them party in his bar. It’s the best bar in town and Ben agrees to pay for anything she orders as long as she finishes it. She picks the most expensive whiskey in the place and gamely chugs it down even if it burns its way down from her throat to her belly. She can remember Ben’s shocked, horrified expression, but nothing else. She wakes up in Rose’s house and no one will tell her what happened.

 

        She sees Ben once more before she leaves town. He buys her dinner in one of the restaurants his family owns and congratulates her again on the scholarship that promises her entry into the country’s Ivy League. Sure, there are Ivy League schools right where they grew up, but a part of her is itching to get away. It’s too small in their hometown, and too many people know her too well. All they see when they look at her is the skinny foster kid wearing their hand-me-downs. She wants a new life, a chance to be a new person.

 

        Ben smiles his rare smile, like he understands, though Rey knows he doesn’t. He has his place in their town, a name to carry forward with pride. He doesn’t need to look elsewhere.

 

*

 

        She starts out an engineering student and finishes as a business and economics major. Everyone tells her that soul-searching and shifting gears is the rule, not the exception, at their university, where people are too smart for their own good, but it still annoys her that it takes her five years to finish college rather than four. Sure, she can say that she was a working student, but a lot of others were—she’d just allowed herself to get side-tracked.

 

        Rey makes sure to visit her home town every chance she gets, just to check in with people. Finn and Rose are still seeing each other and are talking about moving to her city because the demand for their jobs is higher. Poe left the country to study abroad two years after graduation, so there’s no excuse to invite Ben to their little get-togethers.

 

        She doesn’t hear good things about him anymore, which surprises her a little. Sure, he’d been brusque growing up, but never downright cruel or unkind. But the whispers get louder over the years until she can’t dismiss them as being the work of a few disgruntled business partners or bitter ex-lovers. When Finn tells her about a girl Ben cussed out at a party because she was “just after my money” and Rose tells her about a small business that Ben had ruthlessly bought out and shut down, Rey grieves for the boy he’d been and wonders what happened.

 

        She’s thought about reaching out a lot of times. They’d e-mailed sporadically over the years—the odd birthday greeting or forwarded message of a cat—but nothing meaningful. At the advent of social media, they’d added and followed each other, but nothing more. She’d seen him once, shortly after graduating from university, when she’d been in line for a movie.

 

        Finn had waved and gone over to talk to him where he and his group of haughty friends were looking over which movies to see. Ben’s dark eyes had met her gaze, but there had been no warmth in them. Rey had looked away and refused to go over, despite Rose’s gentle prodding, and that had been it.

 

*

 

        Ben and his wife—a fashion model named Bazine—don’t post pictures of their wedding anywhere public. Rose swears that Bazine posted an Instagram story of her dress—“It was too Cinderella-ey, Rey!”—but Rey pretends to only be mildly interested. She switches the topic to other classmates, because talking about Ben Solo and his wife makes her chest tighten and her vision blur.

 

        Poe comes to visit, gorgeously tanned and healthy from the sunny tropics where he’s been working, and it’s harder to avoid talking about Ben with him around. He and Ben had drifted over the years, too, but he’d still warranted an invitation to the wedding, and he’d taken the time to go. Rey doesn’t have to wonder long why he hadn’t bothered to tell them that Ben was getting married.

 

        “I asked why you guys weren’t invited,” Poe slurs after his sixth shot of Cuervo. “I mean, yeah, it’s a small wedding, but we were _family_ once.”

 

        Everyone else at the table disagrees. Rey takes the last shot of tequila away from Poe. She needs to be drunk to listen to this.

 

        “Apparently, _Bazine_ didn’t want you guys there.” Poe rolls his eyes. “I was so sure Ben was kidding, but then I showed up like a jackass and didn’t see you guys there. Should’ve just skipped it. What a _bitch._ ” He’s open about his contempt for Ben’s wife, which makes Rey smile even if smiling makes her guilty.

 

        Rey has only seen Bazine once—Rose had later informed her that she’d been the girl standing next to Ben at the theatre—and Rey’s always thought that she seems wrong for Ben. She’s strikingly beautiful, but something about her comes off as too sharp and too flat at the same time. Rey doesn’t want to keep thinking about the proper word for the feeling, since she’s half-sure it might be plain jealousy.

 

        Rose and Finn have fun trashing Bazine: her high-pitched voice and the fact that Paige, Rose’s older sister, who’d worked with Bazine, described her as “mosquito-brain.” Poe laughs because he’s never liked her, because he’s sure she’s just some gold-digger.

 

        Rey just drinks and refuses to examine the hurt.

 

*

 

        It’s Christmas-time and Rey is showing her out-of-town friends where she grew up. They haul her into Han’s bar, ignoring her protests, and Rey finds herself standing in the same spot where she’d passed out from drinking for the first time. It’s different—snazzier since Ben has taken a hand in management—but it’s the same weathered, shaggy-haired bartender who takes her order.

 

        “How long has it been?” he asks in that same rumbling voice.

 

        “Fourteen years, sir.”

 

        “ _Fourteen years.”_ He chuckles as starts to work on the drinks. “Well. I’m glad to see you around. The last time I saw you, Ben was carrying you out the door.”

 

        It’s embarrassing, but it’s the first time anyone has talked about what happened that night beyond telling Rey that she passed out. Mr. Bacca grins at her discomfort. “You know better than to guzzle vintage Macallan now, I hope. If I hadn’t seen the bottle, I’d swear Ben was just looking for an excuse to put his hands on you.”

 

        He’s still laughing when he slides over her drinks, oblivious to her shock. Rey pays and head back to her table, and it takes four shots to keep herself from crying.

 

*

 

        “So, they’re talking about organizing a reunion soon.”

 

        They’re in Rey’s favourite nail salon and she slides Rose a speaking glance. Pedicure time is peaceful time. Rose doesn’t seem to notice—she’s still flipping through that month’s issue of _InStyle._

 

        “It’s going on fifteen years and everyone’s wondering where everyone else is. We were supposed to have a reunion after ten years, remember?”

 

        Ben had taken charge of that. It had fallen through because he and Hux—another classmate who had been part of the planning and funding of the event—had fallen out over a business dispute and things had escalated into other aspects of their relationship. Before Rey had left Facebook, she’d seen the polls on their Facebook group. Because of the whole Solo/Hux drama, people wanted the reunion to be planned exclusively by former student council members.

 

        “I don’t live there anymore,” Rey tells her, knowing what Rose is about to say.

 

        “No,” Rose agrees, unwilling to be put off, “but you can take charge of rounding up the people who live here. You know, coordinate with those planning it over there.”

 

        It’s stupid when Rey thinks about the state of her heart, but when Rose gives her Ben’s number she can’t refuse.

 

*

 

        She’s glad it’s a recording when Rey hears Ben’s voice for the first time in over a decade. It’s deeper than she remembers, and she nearly drops her phone in surprise.

 

        “Hi Rey. It’s Ben. Solo. Rose gave me your number. I . . .” There’s a rush that sounds like a breath. “You were supposed to call me. About the reunion. I need you to confirm who’s coming. Apart from you, I mean. It’s really early, but I want a rough estimate.” There’s a pause that makes Rey check if the message has ended, even if there’s no beep. Then—

 

        “Call me. We need to talk.”

 

        Instead, Rey calls Rose, tells her she can’t be part of the organizing committee because of work. Rose sounds skeptical, a little upset because Rey is usually so good at getting things done despite how busy she can get, but somewhere between Rey explaining that she really _can’t_ be involved and she might not even go to the reunion, Rose seems to understand.

 

        Then Rey finishes a bottle of wine and blocks Ben’s number. She doesn’t care what he might think or say, she just knows that she can’t keep fixating on him if she wants to go on. He’s married and she needs to deal.

 

        She can’t spend the rest of her life thinking about “what if.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is only partially autobiographical. If you managed to read all the way through, I hope you’re okay! In case you’re wondering, I’m okay, haha. This was written a while ago and now that I’m okay, it felt like a good time to post it. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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